April 2 USA: FBI should tape its interviews----Failure to record hurts cases How many more embarrassments must the FBI suffer before it brings its interviewing procedures up to 21st century - even 20th century - standards? The agency that leads the way in the development of fingerprint files, electronic surveillance, ballistics, DNA tests and other crime-fighting weapons very rarely allows agents to videotape or even tape-record interviews with suspects and witnesses. Agents prefer to take hand-written notes during interviews and then convert them into a summary report. The FBI argues that interviewees talk more freely if they're not being taped - a claim disputed by Denver homicide detectives and other local law enforcement agencies that have routinely taped witnesses and suspects for years. But defense attorneys are increasingly able to get access to the notes on which the FBI report is based - and find discrepancies, usually in the FBI's favor. That's been an issue in the ongoing federal case against Stan Ford, the Denver firefighter charged with selling illegal machine guns. His attorney pointed out, for instance, that the FBI notes said Ford liked to "buy and sell guns legally" but the word "legally" was omitted from the report. This is a relatively penny-ante case, and we don't know how it will turn out, but lack of a taped record may be one reason why Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols is serving a life term instead of pushing up daisies. The jury declined to vote unanimously for the death penalty, and afterward forewoman Niki Deutchman partly blamed the FBI in 1998 for not taping its interviews. "It would really have made a difference to us," she said. "It seems arrogant on the part of the FBI to say, 'We have good recall, and you can take what we said.'" This comment reflects another fact that hurts the FBI these days: Its agents aren't regarded as the infallible crime-fighting heroes they once were. Ron Woods is a Houston lawyer who, before serving as a Nichols defense attorney, was an FBI agent and a prosecutor. He told the News that one reason the agency doesn't record interviews is that it's easier to make agents' notes fit a preconceived conclusion. Woods mentioned a famous passage written by Danny Coulson, a former high official at the FBI, in his book No Heroes. Coulson wrote about his becoming a target in a criminal probe after a case was botched, but he declined to be interviewed unless he could submit his own sworn statement as well. He wrote: "I had seen too many criminal investigations in which FBI agents conducted interviews and then paraphrased their subject inaccurately because they were unfamiliar with the complicated subject matter or had their own spin on the case already." Taped interviews protect prosecutors and the accused alike, and should be routine in major cases. If the FBI would use tape, it might encourage even more local agencies to do the same. (source: Editorial, Rocky Mountain News) ***************** Can next 'Unabomber' be helped? The 10th anniversary of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's arrest in front of his mean little shed near Lincoln reminds us of 2 concerns at the time -1 bogus, and 1 still all too real. The erroneous concern was the fear that finding the Unabomber in Montana would be yet another blow to the states already shaky credibility. Commentators worried that the Freemen standoff would make Montanans look like kooks, that hunting of Yellowstone bison a few years earlier would make us look like blood-thirsty killers of a symbol of the West, and that our lack of a speed limit would make us look like idiots. Hardly, in other words, a place that tourists might want to visit. Baseless fears, all. Tourism was unaffected, and the pace of people moving to Montana kept increasing. But enough about us. The other concern involved the realization that for so long we lived, unknowing, with a mentally ill killer in our midst. Kaczynski, who after his arrest was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, believed our increasingly technological society was out to get him, and he decided that mailing bombs was a way to fight back. Kaczynski kept largely to himself, but he wasnt invisible. Many around Lincoln knew the man, if only by sight. But even if he seemed a little odd, nobody has reason to suspect him of his crimes. After all, someone living like a hermit will be expected to be a little odd. Actually, the only people who could have been expected to pick up on Kaczynski's problems would have been his family, and his brother hadn't seen him for a decade before his arrest. David Kaczynski told the IR that his biggest regret is his failure to realize "how desperate, how ill my brother really was." It's rare for the mentally ill to become violent, but it happens. Just 2 years after the Unabomber's arrest, Russell Eugene Weston, who also had lived alone in a cabin, this time in Rimini, drove to the U.S. Capitol, burst inside, and shot 2 policemen to death. Weston has been the center of legal arguments over whether he should be given medication to make it possible for him to go though a death-penalty trial. Weston also lived far from home and anyone who knew of his mental condition. Somehow, society needs to better look after its mentally ill members, and not leave them to suffer their delusions and fears. Nobody wants to impinge on the rights of people who are "a little odd," but David Kaczynski, speaking of his brother, was dead on to observe, "I think he is an example of what happens when mental illness is not treated over time." (source: Helena Independent Record) ************************ Verbatim Verbatim '... killing this man would not bring our daughter back.' (An excerpt from a statement delivered Feb. 1 to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Property Rights in Washington. The statement was written by Vicki A. Schieber and Sylvester J. Schieber; Vicki A. Schieber was the presenter. The Schiebers' daughter Shannon was 23 when she was murdered in May 1998 by a serial rapist in Philadelphia.) I am the mother of a murder victim, and I serve on the board of directors of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR), a national nonprofit organization of people who have lost a family member to murder or state execution and who oppose the death penalty in all cases. There are MVFHR members in every state. Discussions of the death penalty typically focus on the offender, the person convicted of murder. My focus, and the focus of those whom I am representing through this testimony, is on the victims of murder and their surviving families. Losing a beloved family member to murder is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. The effects on the family and even on the wider community extend well beyond the initial shock and trauma. The common assumption in this country is that families who have suffered this kind of loss will support the death penalty. That assumption is so widespread and so unquestioned that a prosecutor will say to a grieving family, "We will seek the death penalty in order to seek justice for your family." A lawmaker introduces a bill to expand the application of the death penalty and announces that he is doing this "to honor victims." A politician believes that she must run on a pro-death-penalty platform or risk being labeled soft on crime and thus unconcerned about victims. As a victim's family member who opposes the death penalty, I represent a growing - and, for the most part, underserved - segment of the crime victim population. Along with the other members of MVFHR, I have come to believe that the death penalty is not what will help me heal. Responding to one killing with another killing does not honor my daughter, nor does it help create the kind of society I want to live in, where human life and human rights are valued. I know that an execution creates another grieving family, and causing pain to another family does not lessen my own pain... . My husband and I were both raised in homes with a deep-seated religious faith. We were both raised in households where hatred was never condoned and where the ultimate form of hate was thought to be the deliberate taking of another person's life. The death penalty involves the deliberate, premeditated killing of another human being. The death certificate of an executed person lists the cause of death as homicide. In carrying forward the principles with which my husband and I were raised, and with which we raised our daughter, we cannot in good conscience support the killing of anyone, even the murderer of our own daughter, if such a person could be imprisoned without parole and thereby no longer a danger to society. No one should infer from our opposition to the death penalty that we did not want Shannon's murderer caught, prosecuted, and put away for the remainder of his life. We believe he is where he belongs today, as he serves his prison sentence, and we rest assured that he will never again perpetrate his sort of crime on any other young women. But killing this man would not bring our daughter back. And it was very clear to us that killing him would have been partly dependent on our complicity in having it done. Had we bent to this natural inclination, however, it would have put us on essentially the same footing as the murderer himself: willing to take someone else's life to satisfy our own ends. That was a posture we were not willing to assume... . We must move beyond vague sentiments about being tough on crime and seeking justice for victims, and look closely at what actions would truly prevent violence or help victims heal in the aftermath of violence. Among the policy changes that Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights recommends in this arena are [that we...] End discrimination against victims' family members who have lost loved ones to murder and oppose the death penalty. Amend the Victims of Crime Act to recognize and validate the position of survivors of murder victims who oppose the death penalty. Current federal and state statutes that predicate the rights and privileges of victims upon the approval of prosecuting authorities lead to a 2-tiered system of victims - those who support the death penalty are good victims; those who do not are suspect... . [C]reate a new paradigm about crime that establishes as a goal an aspiration for healing, for both individuals and society. When the focus is on healing for the victims, instead of blind retribution against perpetrators, we truly honor the meaning of justice. (source: Philadelphia Inquirer) CALIFORNIA: Death penalty moratorium supporters try again to block executions Death penalty moratorium supporters will try again this week to put a hold on executions in California, the state with the largest death row in the country. A bill by Assembly members Sally Lieber, D-Santa Clara, and Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood, would bar executions at least until 2008 - after a state commission has reported on ways to improve the accuracy of jury verdicts in criminal cases. The measure is scheduled for a hearing Tuesday by the Assembly Public Safety Committee. The Public Safety Committee approved a similar bill by Koretz and Lieber in January, but that measure died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee without coming up for a vote. Kortez said he didn't want to ask fellow Democrats to run the risk of voting for a bill that could be used as campaign fodder by Republicans if he wasn't sure it would pass. In an attempt to reassure nervous lawmakers, the new bill would give voters the final say on whether there should be a moratorium. But trying to put that question on the November ballot creates a higher hurdle for the bill. It would need two-thirds votes instead of simple majorities to pass the full Assembly and Senate, and that would take some Republican support. Finding those votes would be difficult at best. Lieber says the bill's supporters have a "moral responsibility" to try, saying that six inmates who were on death row were later exonerated. "I don't think there's a question that an innocent person could be put to death in California," she said. "I think we have a moral responsibility to take a brief timeout and look at these questions." If voters approved the moratorium, it would remain in place until the Legislature had considered the recommendations of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice and passed legislation restoring executions. The 19-member commission, chaired by former Attorney General John Van de Kamp, is required to submit a final report to lawmakers by Dec. 31, 2007. The commission is looking at a number of factors that could lead to wrongful convictions - including incorrect eyewitness identifications, false confessions, the withholding of exculpatory evidence and false testimony by jailhouse snitches - and discussing ways to combat those problems, said Gerald Uelmen, the commission's executive director and a Santa Clara University law school professor. He says the commission probably won't issue its final report until the end of 2007. The 648 prisoners on California's death row are in no immediate danger of being executed without the Lieber-Koretz legislation because of a dispute over the constitutionality of lethal injections. A federal judge in San Jose has scheduled May hearings on that issue. (source: Associated Press) WASHINGTON (state) A fatally inconsistent state death penalty? Of all death penalty states, Washington may be the most reluctant to execute its condemned killers. State law permits prosecutors to seek capital punishment only in the most outrageous cases of murder. The law also provides defendants multiple ways to escape execution. In the penalty phase of the trial, for example, jurors are required to consider any grounds for mercy and must be informed that the murderer will be sentenced to life without possibility of parole if he is not executed. Such protections, plus extensive appeals, have spared the lives of the vast majority of killers. Since the 1960s, Washington has executed only 4 condemned murderers - and three of those sought death by refusing to appeal their sentences. The rarity of executions speaks well of this state. But it has created a new grounds of appeal: that there is no logic or consistency in the way death penalties are handed down and carried out in Washington. The state Supreme Court came within one vote of effectively abolishing capital punishment Thursday as it ruled 5-4 to uphold the death sentence of Dayva Cross. In 1999, the 46-year-old Cross stabbed his wife to death in their Snoqualmie home, then butchered two of her daughters, one 18, the other 15. Hes no sweetheart. But his lawyer very nearly persuaded the high court that Cross should not be executed because many other killers - some worse than he - have been spared the death penalty. The most infamous example is Gary Ridgway, AKA the Green River killer, who pleaded guilty in 2003 to 48 counts of aggravated murder. Ridgway was given life in exchange for his assistance in solving his killings and bringing "closure" to the families of his victims. But as the 4 dissenting justices noted, Ridgway was not alone in escaping the ultimate punishment. Nearly all other multiple murderers have also been spared. The 2 perpetrators of the 1983 Wah Mee massacre in Seattle - Benjamin Ng and Kwan Fai "Willie" Mak - both wound up with life without parole for murdering 13 members of a gambling club. David Lewis Rice has escaped the death penalty for his shockingly methodical 1985 killing of a Seattle couple and their 2 young boys. Robert Yates - like Ridgway a serial killer of prostitutes - also was given a plea deal in Spokane County in which he pleaded guilty 6 1/2 years ago to 13 counts of premeditated murder in exchange for life. (Yates was later condemned to death for 2 other murders in Pierce County, but hes a long way from execution.) On behalf of the four dissenters, Justice Charles Johnson wrote: "The death penalty is like lightning randomly striking some defendants and not others. Where the death penalty is not imposed on Gary Ridgway, Ben Ng and Kwan Fai Mak, who represent the worst mass murders in Washington's history, on what basis do we determine on whom it is imposed? "No rational explanation exists to explain why some individuals escape the penalty of death and others do not." We're reluctant to argue for abolishing Washington's narrowly drawn death penalty, which reflects the will of the electorate. But Johnson's argument is hard to ignore in a state whose laws generally call for proportionate sentences for similar crimes. With the likes of Ridgway, Ng and Mak living out their lives in prison, Dayva Cross execution - if it ever happens - may well be the legal equivalent of a capricious bolt of lightning. (source: News Tribune) *************** Foes of death penalty sense shifting momentum despite recent court loss Death penalty critics sense a growing shift away from capital punishment in Washington state after nearly half of the state Supreme Court signed a blistering opinion that attacked the system's basic fairness. The case also brought renewed attention to a fundamental question about the system after Green River Killer Gary Ridgway's life sentence in a plea deal with King County: How can anyone be put to death if not the states most prolific killer? "I think this is the court starting to take a look at this and saying it's crazy," said Tim Ford, an experienced capital defense attorney. "And I dont see the majority saying it's great - I think I see the majority saying, 'We can't stop it."' Prosecutors, however, were heartened by the courts narrow defense of the state's death penalty laws and a system that relies on elected county prosecutors to make the initial decisions about seeking death. In a statement, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng said, "the Court recognized that each aggravated murder case is unique and that the disposition in any other single case should not invalidate the entire death penalty statute." Washington state is one of 38 states with the death penalty, and has executed 4 people since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for capital punishment in 1976. The state Supreme Court is required to review every death sentence handed out, and in its review it must consider "whether the sentence of death is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant." Dayva Cross, 46, who stabbed to death his wife and 2 of her children in 1999, challenged the constitutionality of Washington's death penalty by arguing it was not proportionally applied. He pointed specifically to Ridgway's life sentence as proof. On Thursday, the court ruled 5-4 to uphold Cross death sentence. Its majority opinion, written by Justice Tom Chambers, acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances of Ridgway's case. But the majority said Ridgway's plea deal - no matter how unfair it may seem - does not automatically invalidate the states death penalty for everyone else. "We do not minimize the importance of this moral question. But it is a question best left to the people and to their elected representatives in the Legislature," Chambers wrote for the court. But the 4-person dissent, written by Justice Charles Johnson, was a withering legal attack on the fairness of the state's capital punishment system. The prison sentence granted to Ridgway and several other mass killers "reveals a staggering flaw in the system of administration of the death penalty in Washington," the dissenters said. "These cases exemplify the arbitrariness with which the penalty of death is exacted. ... The death penalty is like lightning, randomly striking some defendants and not others," the dissenters wrote. On Friday, current and former prosecutors who defended the majority ruling said perfectly proportional treatment cant be attained in every criminal case - much less every murder. "The statute is designed to make it extremely difficult in Washington to impose a death sentence. The flip side is, it means that some individuals who you may believe deserve the death penalty may not receive it," said Pam Loginsky, a staff lawyer with the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. "It would be impossible to have sort of mathematical precision or guaranteed proportional treatment, because every case is different," said Jerry Costello, Pierce County's chief criminal deputy prosecutor and a death penalty supporter. Some death penalty critics, however, said the high court now appears strikingly close to overturning its current capital punishment statute. Mark Larranaga, the former director of the Death Penalty Assistance Center, was among the observers who said 4 of the high court's justices now seem fundamentally opposed to the state's present death penalty system. "That, I think, is an incredible change in the landscape of capital jurisprudence in Washington state," said Larranaga, who was a defense lawyer in Cross' original case. (source: Associated Press) ILLINOIS: Deal might spare life of girl's accused killer The mother of Ryan Harris, the 11-year-old girl raped and murdered on the South Side in 1998, said Saturday she has been told prosecutors have worked out a deal that will spare the life of her daughter's accused killer. "I was not happy about it at all," Sabrina Harris said in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. "I'm mad as hell." Sabrina Harris said she wept when Cook County prosecutors told her the news Friday after a hearing for Floyd Durr at the 26th and California courthouse. Prosecutors have said they would seek the death penalty if Durr, 37, is convicted at trial, which is scheduled for May 1. Durr already is serving a 125-year prison sentence for assaults on other girls in the Englewood neighborhood. "Life in the penitentiary is a luxury compared to what happened to my daughter," Harris said. "Do you think him spending his entire life in prison while I have to visit my daughter at her grave is justice?" Attorney unaware of any deal Harris said she doesn't know why prosecutors have apparently taken the death penalty off the table, and she said she didn't ask. "Once they said that [they wouldn't seek the death penalty], that was all I needed to hear," she said. A spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office could not be reached for comment Saturday. One of Durr's defense attorneys, Daniel Coyne, said he was unaware of any deal to avoid the death penalty. "The case is still set as a death case," Coyne said Saturday. The Ryan Harris slaying drew national attention after 2 boys -- ages 8 and 7 -- were charged with her murder just days after she was found dead in an Englewood vacant lot July 28, 1998. The boys were later cleared after Ryan's underwear was found to have traces of semen -- something the boys were too young to produce. Last year, the City of Chicago agreed to pay $6.2 million to the family of one of the wrongly accused boys. The family of the other received a $2 million settlement. Durr was arrested Aug. 28, 1998, and linked to three assaults of young girls in Englewood. His DNA also allegedly was linked to the semen samples from Ryan Harris' slaying. At Friday's court hearing, neither the attorneys nor the judge gave any indication in open court that a plea deal might be in the works. Instead, Judge Stanley Sacks ruled Durr is mentally fit to stand trial after a clinical psychologist testified Durr would be able to assist in his own defense and understands the charges against him. But Sacks has yet to rule on a defense motion seeking to bar a possible death penalty on the ground that Durr is mentally retarded. Sacks would have to consider three factors: Durr's IQ, written documentation showing he was mentally retarded before he turned 18 and strong evidence that Durr's ailment significantly affects his daily life, prosecutors say. "I don't believe he is [mentally retarded]," Sabrina Harris said Saturday. "I don't think there's anything wrong with him." 'Lowest of the low' Defense attorneys have been gathering Durr's school records from Chicago and Mississippi. Durr's attorneys said in an earlier hearing that school testing done when Durr was a child showed he ranked among "the lowest of the low." Ryan Harris was last seen July 27, 1998, riding her bicycle near Robeson High School in Englewood, where she was staying for the summer. Her body was discovered the next day in a vacant lot behind a building at 6636 S. Parnell. (source: Chicago Sun-Times) *********************** Murder suspect may be youngest in county history When 15-year-old Max Keding was charged with 1st-degree murder last week, he may have become the youngest murder defendant in DeKalb County's 169-year history. If convicted, he will join a group of less than 1,000 people annually in the United States, and less than 100 in Illinois, who in recent years have had the dubious distinction of being murderers who committed their crimes while under the age of 17. Keding is accused of gunning down 19-year-old Jayson Martin Tuesday night in what police are calling a gang-related dispute. Both had criminal records and alleged ties to rival gangs. According to attorney Mike Coghlan, who served as the county's state's attorney from 1988 to 1996, and local police officials, the last juvenile murderer in DeKalb County was 16-year-old Richard Ordonez, who in August 1991 gunned down a 17-year-old Sycamore man just west of the county courthouse in Sycamore. Driving the car Ordonez had been in was a 14-year-old who also faced charges related to the killing and had his case heard in juvenile court, Coghlan said. Ordonez, who was weeks shy of his 17th birthday at the time of the murder, was convicted and sentenced to more than 27 years. He is housed at the Dixon Correctional Center and is eligible for parole in 2008, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections Web site. Across the state, only 62 people between the ages of 12 and 17 were "known murder offenders" in 2003, the last year for which data was available, according to the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports. The figures are culled from police reports but are not considered completely exact and do not necessarily represent convictions for murder. Between 1980 and 2003, the number of murderers in that age group spiked in 1994, when the FBI reported 309. There is no data for 3 of those years, however - 1984, 1985 and 1987. The number of young killers has been generally declining since 1994, with 2003's total the 2nd lowest over the 23-year period. The fewest was 53 in 2000. National data reflect a similar trend, with the most young killers seen in 1994, when there were 2,800, and the fewest in 2003, when there were 923. Keding's case will not be heard in juvenile court because of a state law, passed in 1998, that automatically transfers serious juvenile cases to adult court as long as the alleged offender is at least 15. Those serious crimes include 1st degree murder, armed robbery with a firearm, and aggravated criminal sexual assault. Current State's Attorney Ron Matekaitis said the only differences in prosecuting a juvenile murder defendant is that he is held in a juvenile detention center until an adult and is not eligible for the death penalty. He said he doesn't believe Keding's case would qualify for the death penalty anyway, under state law. "The case is going to be prosecuted just as any other case will be prosecuted of this magnitude," he said. Northern Illinois University sociologist David Luckenbill, who teaches juvenile delinquency and criminology, said Illinois is not alone in passing get-tough-on-crime laws that target juveniles. "There has been a movement over the last 25 years of holding young people increasingly accountable at the adult level," he said. Whether or not that's wise depends on who you ask, he said, and both sides can present data to back up their positions. Luckenbill's opinion was that the trend to send more juvenile offenders to adult court is "unreasonable in light of what we know about human development" and based on the assumption that a 15-year-old has the same mental capacities as a person in his 20s. (source: Daily Chronicle) ************* Author to discuss death penalty Sister Helen Prejean, nationally acclaimed author of the book "Dead Man Walking," will speak on ending capital punishment in the United States at Lewis University's annual Signum Fidei Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the fieldhouse of the Student Recreation and Fitness Center on the main campus on Illinois 53. Those interested in attending should reserve their place by calling (815) 588-7787 or by e-mailing mission at lewisu.edu. Seating is limited. A book signing will follow the lecture. Sponsored by Lewis University's Mission and Heritage Council and the Center for Ministry and Spirituality, the Signum Fidei Lecture brings men and women of vision and faith to the Lewis campus to illuminate issues affecting the church and its people, to reflect on spirituality in the Catholic tradition, and to provide a forum for topics based on church teaching. "Dead Man Walking" has received countless awards and recognitions including being named to The American Library Association's Notable Book List, holding a place on the New York Times Best Seller List for 31 weeks, and being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The major motion picture of the same name was released in 1996. It also received many awards, including 4 Oscars. Sister Prejean is the founder of Survive, a victims' advocacy group, where she continues to counsel not only inmates but also the families of murder victims. She has served as chairwoman for the board of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, as a member of Amnesty International, and as an honorary member of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation. (source: Suburban Chicago News)
[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----USA, CALIF., WASH., ILL.
Rick Halperin Sun, 2 Apr 2006 18:33:07 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
